When your academic book is coming together, do you know how to get it in the hands of an interested publisher? It’s not as easy as sending out complete manuscripts to your favorite university presses without any forewarning (in fact, please don’t do that!), but it’s a manageable process if you know ahead of time what will work and what press editors expect to see from you (and in what order).
I’d like to know what you want to know. What aspect of author-publisher relationships is most mystifying to you? Perhaps you don’t know how to make that initial contact, or maybe you’ve been offered a contract but don’t understand what it means. Did the publisher send your manuscript out for reviews, but you haven’t heard about it in months? Have you been asked to find your own indexer and don’t know where to start? Are you wondering about the etiquette of sending inquiries to multiple presses?
Whatever your question, you can email, message, or tweet me anytime. And now I’ve made it easy to pose anonymous questions about soliciting publishers—just fill out this one-question survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TZCMNQW
The more I know about your concerns related to placing your research with a press, the better the content I can release for you.
I’ll tackle your most resonant concerns as soon as I can. In the meantime, you do know about Tweed’s dissertation-to-book guides, right? The fourth and fifth installments deal specifically with contacting press editors and proposing your book to publishers.
Thanks for your help!
